The Historiographical Development of the Concept “mfecane” and ...

Chapter 1
Introduction
Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. Jesus,
John 8:32, Bible. 1
Scholarship needs to pass from the making of myths to the study
of myths and, even to the study of the people who make the
myths. Pocock, in Harris, 1988. 2
The historian is never a specialist of past events. He [or she] is …
a specialist of past signs. More accurately, he is a specialist of
those past signs which have survived into the present. Clarence-
Smith, in Isichei. 3
In 1928 Walker published the first university textbook on South African history,
A History of South Africa. 4 With regards to African history he was largely
influenced by the amateur historian, Theal, who, though dealing mostly with
colonial history, had created the racist, Zulu-centric, geographically-integrated
version of what was to become known as the mfecane. Walker’s one-page
account would be of no consequence had he not invented the Xhosa
neologism, “Mfecane”, to describe the African wars of the 1820’s and 1830’s. 5
The term is larger than the sum total of the events it describes, transforming
them into an all-embracing concept. The term soon became common currency,
1 ‘John 8:32’, K. Barker (ed), The NIV Study Bible (Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1985), 1613.
2 J. Pocock, ‘British History: a Plea for a New Subject’, Journal of Modern History, 47 (1975),
614, quoted in P. Harries, 'The Roots of Ethnicity', African Affairs, 87 (June 1988), 25. See also
D. Golan, Inventing Shaka (London, 1994), 9, 137.
3 W.G. Clarence-Smith, ‘For Braudel: a Note on the Ecole des Annales and the Historiography
of Africa’, History of Africa (1977), 277, quoted in E. Isichei, A History of African Societies to
1870 (Cambridge, 1997), 24.
4 E.A. Walker, A History of South Africa (London, 1928).
5 Ibid., x, 210, 226. G.M. Theal, History of the Boers in South Africa (London, 1887).
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